Fully [H]

Joined

Apr 10, 2003

Messages

19,893

Pretty nice RX 480 card that Asus engineered! That GTX 1060 was no slouch at all. Looks like you can't go wrong with either choice if upgrading at this time. If I wasn't waiting for Vega, I'd toss one of these into my PC for some CrossfireX action. Still might; never know when the upgrade bug bites.

Well this is exactly why we share all our data so you can make up your own mind.

This card is one of the best, if not the best RX 480 cards that you can buy if you are looking to overclock. That and considering it is priced very reasonably right now is why we gave it a Gold Editor's Choice Award.

Awards are 100% subjective evaluations. Certainly you can assign whatever value you wish.

(Did you know that Scott Wasson, owner of TechReport.com, is an AMD employee?)

[H]ard|Gawd

Joined

Apr 3, 2013

Messages

1,140

It's good I don't have the money to get a card now because I know whatever I might get, I would do nothing but second guess myself. So, hurray for observations from the sidelines. Still eyeing the 1070... I guess I'll get to keep waiting all the way to Vega and see how things get shaken up.

Just Plain Mean

Well, keep in mind that because of the way we test, we do not have the luxury of just dumping in a new game immediately. First we spend time looking for more demanding portions of the game, so what we generally show as "best playable" is represented through the entire game, not just a benchmark or first level. Then we have to iron out a real world gameplay runthrough that is solidly repeatable. Getting this done alone can take a great amount of time. Then we also spend a lot of times with games that we make a decision that those should NOT be added to testing as well. And of course, we have to take time to figure that out as well.

Gawd

Joined

Oct 13, 2013

Messages

573

-wow, +110 watt more power consumption for the AsusRX480 compared to MSI1060GTX !!. Didn't expect to see this kind of gap!!
-Also, in my opinion, maybe it's time for older games like Fallout4 to be replaced by newer & thus, more interesting from benchmarking-point-of-view titles (*TotalWar:Warhammer or F1 2016 come to my mind )
P.S. Great review !!

Supreme [H]ardness

Joined

Aug 17, 2005

Messages

6,552

I agree with Kyle, that it appears to be the top 480 card people can buy....So the Gold award seems justified to me. The power consumption is common knowledge for 6 months now lol and +100 watts is no big deal to me

Supreme [H]ardness

Joined

Apr 14, 2010

Messages

5,041

ASUS made a totally custom/refined RX 480. Highest OC tested, cooling was superb and card was very quiet with a great current price point really not much more then a reference version. Asus OCing software allowing voltage of 1.3v and the card easily could handle it. Also compared to one of the best 1060's OC out there and both would have in most cases the same game play. The only downside is the added power but the cost of that is virtually nothing, noise and card temp was great. For a RX 480 and at this price point I agree it should be Gold.

Review was really well done with a lot of significant Data points - I give this review a Gold standard of achievement award.

The 480 was 13% faster in Doom. I'm not sure why that counts as "outclassed" but the 1060 winning by the same margin in three other games doesn't seem to count.

The 1060 was 12-14% faster in Watchdogs, Witcher 3 and Fallout 4. Tied in Battlefield and Deus X (allowing for margin of error) And had a minor win in GOW.

While I understand the article's Gold Award for being such a great card compared to other 480s, I don't see why you'd choose this over a 1060 unless you are playing a very select group of games that line up with it's strength's or you have a Freesync monitor. All else being equal you might as well get a similarly priced 1060 and enjoy and get the few percent of extra performance with no downside.

Though we compare it 1060 performance, it doesn't live in a vacuum. We must also consider other 480's we've evaluated, and thus, this one stands at the top so far. It is literally the best 480 we've tested yet, with the highest overclock, and performance and matches gameplay experience with the overclocked 1060.

Gawd

I agree with Kyle, that it appears to be the top 480 card people can buy....So the Gold award seems justified to me. The power consumption is common knowledge for 6 months now lol and +100 watts is no big deal to me

I was surprised by the results, not because i'm unaware of AMD's greater power consumption (*this is a fact for a long time now ! ), but mostly because after AMD's new CRIMSON driver release, the company claims that the power consumption drops up to 31%(*magic word is up-to), by enabling "Radeon Chill "
On the other hand, i've read about some possible-sporadical stuttering when using "Chill" , so i'm assuming that Brent didn't enable this feature during the review tests in order to avoid possible stuttering ? ?

Crossfit Fast Walk Champion Runnerup

Joined

Mar 9, 2010

Messages

1,669

Good to see the 480 start to shine. I believe as new games come out might see it start pulling ahead of the 1060 across the board when DX12 becomes the standard. I love my 1060, but the 480 can deliver. Did AMD fix the Polaris VR issues? That was a main concern when i decided to go with the 1060.

Supreme [H]ardness

I was surprised by the results, not because i'm unaware of AMD's greater power consumption (*this is a fact for a long time now ! ), but mostly because after AMD's new CRIMSON driver release, the company claims that the power consumption drops up to 31%(*magic word is up-to), by enabling "Radeon Chill "
On the other hand, i've read about some possible-sporadical stuttering when using "Chill" , so i'm assuming that Brent didn't enable this feature during the review tests in order to avoid possible stuttering ? ?

Probably so.....And i agree with their decision not to use it either and i doubt it really helps because of the way [H] picks very demanding areas of the game with any and all fps limiters off.....the two just dont mix in my mind

[H]ard|Gawd

Good to see the 480 start to shine. I believe as new games come out might see it start pulling ahead of the 1060 across the board when DX12 becomes the standard. I love my 1060, but the 480 can deliver. Did AMD fix the Polaris VR issues? That was a main concern when i decided to go with the 1060.

Kyle, any plan to run through this (or another) rx480 in a VR game or two with the new drivers? I'd like to see if they've fixed anything yet and if they can achieve parity, or something approximating that, with the 1060.

Gawd

The 480 was 13% faster in Doom. I'm not sure why that counts as "outclassed" but the 1060 winning by the same margin in three other games doesn't seem to count.

The 1060 was 12-14% faster in Watchdogs, Witcher 3 and Fallout 4. Tied in Battlefield and Deus X (allowing for margin of error) And had a minor win in GOW.

While I understand the article's Gold Award for being such a great card compared to other 480s, I don't see why you'd choose this over a 1060 unless you are playing a very select group of games that line up with it's strength's or you have a Freesync monitor. All else being equal you might as well get a similarly priced 1060 and enjoy and get the few percent of extra performance with no downside.

I only look at Doom, GOW , BF1, Deus Ex as benchmarks due to them being newer engines/tech and fairly mature in patches to fix issues. WD2 is new and Ubisoft so that right there gives it a wait and see plus it was only a few actual FPS difference . Non OC'ed 480 beat 1060 in Vulkan which is huge considering Unity now supports it.

I read reviews to see how things will most likely pan out for future games, I don't buy video cards for games I am not playing is more so my approach.

1060 has 2GB less ram and cost 499.90 CAD the ASUS O8G is $395; I'd rather save $100 get 2GB more RAM just to be safe

Personal Experience: Rather have better or same performance in newer games, and not have to deal with Nvidia horrible drivers and G-sync, more so gsync I hate, I can live with waiting 40 seconds after making a change in their horrible control panel compared to having to AltTab/AltEnter and screw around to get G-sync to stop locking games at 30FPS for no reason/ 8 FPS in windowed mode bug

[H]ard|Gawd

Joined

Apr 7, 2012

Messages

1,401

Kyle and Brent
Why do newer games like The Division get removed from your game test suite while older and less graphically impressive ones like Fallout 4 still continue to remain. btw Division also saw a DX12 patch which shows a nice bump in performance for a few cards like GTX 1080, Rx 480 and Fury X. Division is showing that DX12 could improve the user experience. Removing newer and more graphically demanding games while retaining older less impressive titles does not help when trying to determine the capabilities of these latest GPUs and their architectures in latest apis like DX12. Whats more relevant is you are searching for titles which improve the user experience while running on latest APIs. So its really puzzling to see you leave out The Division while continuing with Fallout 4.

Fully [H]

Joined

Oct 7, 2000

Messages

18,661

there have been several examples where a rx480 gets even better under water. theory is that is from reduced load from the missing fans, more for the core to use and lower wattage used too. even with just an aio.

Fully [H]

there have been several examples where a rx480 gets even better under water. theory is that is from reduced load from the missing fans, more for the core to use and lower wattage used too. even with just an aio.

Fully [H]

Just a little. These cards don't like a ton of voltage. Using the Asus GPUTweak II tool will give a little too much voltage as you near 1450 - 1475. Just experiment a little and see what you can get out of it.